Microsoft cleared by UK watchdog to buy 'Call of Duty' maker

Microsoft's new offer to buy "Call of Duty" maker Activision Blizzard has been approved by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), bringing an end to a near two-year bid to secure the gaming industry's biggest-ever takeover.

The approval follows a "restructuring of the deal" and a "major concession made by Microsoft" to the regulators, said PC Mag. This comes after the CMA blocked the original $69bn (£59bn) bid in April over concerns that Microsoft, which makes the Xbox console, would dominate the new cloud gaming market.

The Financial Times saw the approval differently, saying it "marks a win" for Brad Smith, the Microsoft executive who "led the company's legal campaign to defend a deal that many investors and analysts had written off earlier this year".

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Writing on social media, Smith said Microsoft was "grateful" for the CMA's thorough "review and decision", which "we believe will benefit players and the gaming industry worldwide".

The CMA said the revised deal would "preserve competitive prices" in the gaming sector and offer more choice and better services, but the BBC said it has "proved controversial and received a mixed response from regulators around the world". It is the "biggest ever tech deal", said The Telegraph.

Even as it finally approved the takeover, the CMA reprimanded Microsoft, which had criticised the watchdog's initial rejection as "bad for Britain". The CMA's chief executive, Sarah Cardell, said that businesses and their advisers "should be in no doubt that the tactics employed by Microsoft are no way to engage with the CMA".

Chancellor Jeremy Hunt had earlier intervened, urging the CMA to "understand their wider responsibilities". The UK regulator had "appeared increasingly isolated" in blocking the takeover after its EU counterparts passed the deal and the US competition regulator failed to secure a court injunction to stop it, said The Guardian.